all i ever hear are nonseasonal players bitching and moaning about wahh why cant we have this and that wahh. you made your choice. stick with it.

It's funny that "all you ever hear is non-seasonal players bitching and moaning" because it sure sounds to me like you are bitching and moaning that you need special snowflake content.

You made a choice to play seasonal content just like others made a choice to play non-seasonal content. Yet, it really seems that you cannot live with your choice unless that means that you get exclusive content. Somehow you don't see the complete hypocrisy in that stance.

Why do some seasonal players have this God complex where they believe that everyone else is inferior and undeserving? Besides, storage space is a massive issue for everyone in the game. It knows no bounds between Seasons, Non-seasons, and Hardcore. It's a problem that we all grapple with regardless of our game mode. When you have a problem that effects everyone, like storage space, you don't put it in one of the three game modes. Tying a very basic game feature such as storage space to any specific game mode is tantamount to the developers denouncing the other game modes as not the "real" game.

Imagine if you had to do some specific task in Hardcore or Non-season to unlock the tabs. That would be just as wrong. I support your desire to play Seasonal characters. It would be completely unfair of Blizzard to give us more stash tabs and simultaneously tell you, the Seasonal player, that you had to spend a few dozen hours playing Non-seasonal characters to unlock them. It's similarly wrong to tell Non-seasonal players that they have to spend a few dozen hours playing Seasonal characters to fulfill a basic need.

I haven't played much of the game since 2.2. I tried some 2.3, it was OK. I read the 2.4 patch notes. I saw how they were removing season-only legendaries. I was happy with this news. Then I saw that they tied storage space to seasonal play and immediately my happiness was replaced with incredulity. They managed to make the situation worse. They managed to thumb their noses at Non-seasonal players even more than they were in the past. I cannot imagine why they'd want to be so spiteful and hateful towards a segment of their playerbase. It just doesn't make sense.

I was ready to give 2.4 a whirl simply because of Legacy of Nightmares because, at this point, I simply have no desire to even attempt to push leaderboards. This single issue, though, will keep me from even trying out 2.4. It's high time they stop treating Non-seasonal players as if we're playing the game "wrong." At the very least with the items in previous seasons we were able to earn them eventually. With the current stash tab proposition we can't even do that. We can't even get them after the season has ended. It's "play seasons" or "go to hell."

OT: As i've said before, the main problem with the game right now is not the dh, it's the overall design of GR and the scaling of damage + unavoidable damage that encourages extreme kiting which makes builds like m6 shine and basically kill off any chance of pure melee specs like swk to compete in high gr.

Absolutely.

The DH, via M6, has the BEST ability to (reliably) deal damage while also having the best chance to out-range, line-of-sight, or whatever other tactics necessary to avoid the incoming damage.

My WD sure as fuck can't out-range jailer if I want to kill the monster any time before next Tuesday. And therein lies the imbalance, which is really only an imbalance when monsters are doing SO FUCKING MUCH DAMAGE that the only way to kill them without constantly running back to your corpse is to do so from five screens away.

Greater Rifts need a lot of work, philosophy-wise otherwise this will continue to be a problem no matter how many skills, items, passives, mechanics they buff/nerf.

Everyone has the same CHANCE to get the "perfect rift." But the number of people who actually get that rift are the severe minority.

It's much like the lottery. And I don't think that anyone with any brain would argue that holding a lottery to determine the #1 spot in ANY semi-competitive environment is the right way to do it.

World Series? Nah. Just draw straws. It makes so much more sense. That's PRECISELY what Conduit Pylons push the "endgame" towards. So it doesn't matter if it's "fair" because it's absurdly-bad gameplay.

What they need to do is sit back and take ANOTHER long, hard, look at itemization.

We still have 100% useless legendaries. Most specs are 100% set-centric. There's very little room to assemble a "set" of legendaries that create synergy and roll with that because Firebirds, Akkan, Maraduers, etc. are just far too strong. This means that the RoRG is, by virtue of the set-centric endgame, a virtual necessity for most players.

The only competition between orange and green items is basically for whichever slot you choose not to equip because of your RoRG and most of the time that's determined by which non-set piece gives the best synergy with the set (Quetz, MoJ, T&T, etc.).

The inherent power of some of the set bonuses is just so immeasurably strong and that's where the problem lies. DHs are pretty shitty, but M6 makes them unbelievably powerful. This is the problem at hand. A set can take a class from "Oooooh I wish I could clear T2" to "HAR HAR HAR HAR GR45 NUBZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ."

When Josh talked about build-changing legendaries, I really didn't envision itemization completely dominated by sets where legendaries were sprinkled in only where sets weren't necessary. I think more people really believed we'd be able to find a "set" of legendary items that all had good synergy and assemble those into working builds (electro-stun wizard comes to mind here as high synergy among items but generally low effectiveness).

While challenge is an important part of endgame, I make the distinction that a proper endgame has to have interlocking systems of progression and challenge. If your "endgame" content offers the same drops as everywhere else, it's not much of an endgame. Likewise, an infinitely scaling statistical system is more of a curiosity and time-waster than a structured challenge.

Greater Rifts are almost offensive to me as "content."

They are rifts... with a timer... and infinite scaling. It's just not my cup of tea in terms of "something I'd like to do forever and ever into the future" which means, from my perspective, it's not really "endgame." I have come to expect Blizzard to be innovative and think outside the box, and Greater Rifts don't feel like any thinking, let alone thinking outside of the box, ever happened during the development process. They just seem like panem et circences - stuff to keep us entertained enough that we don't realize how crappy the stuff we have is.

I would honestly prefer if the "leaderboards" amounted to who could clear T6 rifts fastest and not who could manage to ninja-click their way through the most one-shot mechanics. I'm just not into such binary challenges. If you fuck up and misclick at any time it's over. To me that sounds more like a bullet hell game than an ARPG, and I guess that's what fundamentally has held me back from really enjoying 2.1. The "challenge" seems to be something that really isn't appropriate to an ARPG. It seems misguided and off-target.

Also, I hate that Blizz overlooked the single player disadvantages in this regard when they fixed rift keystones to require one (and only one!) per player. Why do 4 players get 4 amulets for the price of 1?

Because Josh and friends really seem to think that there is one "best" way to play the game and anyone who doesn't follow that exact mold is doing it wrong and has no business playing the game. In addition to Hellfire Rings/Amulets, it's plenty obvious that the only "right" way to level your legendary gems is in co-op games. Why? Because the scaling between solo and co-op isn't even close to right. Things like this SHOULD be plenty apparent and should be fixed - there's no reason that co-op players should be able to get more ranks on their gems than a solo player. Then again, this is also a testament to how ass-backwards the current gem leveling paradigm is. It shouldn't have anything to do with what GR level you're clearing. This was echoed by almost EVERYONE during the beta.

Well, while the build diversity in D2 was considered better because the low difficulty of the game allowed you to stomp anything anway, I wouldn't want that back. In D3 there are plenty of opportunities to create such exotic characters, you just don't get to excel in grifts with them. Just like you don't bring a stock car to a Formula 1 race. Also, even in D2 you could very well get alienated if you didn't bring your Java/Hammerdin/Smiter. Now the addition of a game mode that enables players who like efficiency to test their limits is a good move. It has some flaws, but it doesn't hinder anyone playing their melee Wizards in t6 and below.

If they removed the legendary gem ranking up from Greater Rifts, then this problem would *mostly* rectify itself as Greater Rifts would basically be for ePeen only.

So long as Greater Rifts have actual rewards (in this case, more powerful legendary gems) then the issue that they stifle diversity matters. It's an absurdly simple fix, though. Which makes me wonder why they went with the LEAST-FAVORITE method for leveling legendary gems among the community. Tying gem progression to Greater Rift level is just so bad and creates far more problems than it solves.

Just give us an xp-based system. Separate legendary gem progression from Greater Rifts. If you do that then suddenly trials are so very easily removed because it doesn't matter one goddamned bit if you can "spam" high-level Greater Rifts and you've killed two major problems with one, very straightforward, change.

What's left? Leveling against the clock in narrow, static tunnels. That's how blizzard wants you to play the game, and that's the ONLY way you can play this game.

Unfortunately, and somewhat shockingly, 1.x was actually better able to hold my attention than 2.x. This is mostly due to Josh's stance that player choice needs to be removed.

I find it absurd that they removed trading because players could circumvent the natural flow of the game and gain some kind of "advantage" over other players. Yet, when faced with people exploiting a bug with XP gains in rifts, they just fix the bug and move on. If one is a problem then the other is a problem. If one problem requires compete eradication of trading then the other surely requires more than just letting the people who exploited keep their spoils. It's inconsistent stances like this which frustrate me.

They want to open up diversity? So they implement a game mode that actively encourages us to seek out every last little .5% increase in effectiveness of our builds. Greater Rifts are the biggest hit to build diversity (and related item diversity) since the horrible decision to "double it" in regards to Inferno difficulty.

They want to open up diversity? So they make Campaign Mode completely useless and Bounties useless except as a gate to Rifts and as a mechanism to get a select few items. Our choices as to *how* to spend our time are at an all-time low. Want to rank up your legendary gems? There is only one way to do that. If you're not going a Greater Rift of equal, or higher, level than the gem you want to rank up then you probably aren't going to be making much progress on that front.

Instead of allowing legendary gems to rank up independent of where you are playing, they chose to limit it which further shoehorns HOW we play. This is OK when it's used sparingly. I'd argue that the Uber events are basically "enough" of it for the whole game, currently.

And I really think the guy/gal who OKd Trials should be tied to a telephone pole and we should be allowed to punch them in the face until all the bones in our hands are broken. They are truly boring and entirely unnecessary. Since they fixed pet survivability I've been able to enjoy 2.1 much more. It was a major stumbling block for me. But, even still, every single time I realize that I have to do a trial I log off. Trials are not fun. They're horrible. The people who thought they were fun make me so angry that I seriously want to hit someone.

I've never felt that way about anyone at Blizzard, ever. I've never wanted to take a swing at Jay, or Josh, or anyone. But if someone stepped forward and took responsibility for Trials I seriously would take a swing at them if I saw them in the street regardless of the repercussions. How anyone, including the people QAing that shit, could have given it the thumbs-up as something enjoyable that enhances the overall experience of the game is beyond me.

Trials are hands-down the absolute worst thing D3 has ever seen. I'd rather have the shitty itemization and AH back than do trials. The fact that I have to spend 15+ minutes talking myself into doing a single trial is mind-blowing. They really should be ashamed of themselves that this is the best they can do given the rocky history that this game has had.

What's worse is that they keep trying to apply band-aids to a system that many people hate and that really isn't working for the playerbase. I do not know a single person who actually enjoys doing trials. Every single person I know would prefer that they were removed from the game. While that's anecdotal, I think it's pretty obvious WHY people might feel this way and WHY it probably is a majority opinion. It shouldn't be shocking that people dislike a must-perform task that gives no rewards at all other than very poor XP.

But, this wouldn't be a major issue.... IF I COULD RANK UP MY LEGENDARY GEMS OUTSIDE OF GREATER RIFTS.

If Greater Rifts were purely "epeen mode" it would help to mitigate how uninspired and boring the Realm of Trials actually is.

It's not like my barbarian has any need to access mojos, sources, quivers, and all that jazz. Even so, I'd gladly trade the very minor inconvenience of having to swap characters to gain access to their specific tabs in order to have an appropriate amount of storage.

They keep giving us one tab here and one tab there, and it's one subject that it's clear the designers just don't "get it" at all. They are so amazingly wrong on this subject it's unbelievable. In a game about items that change your builds and create synergies it's not remotely smart to have our options limited by storage space. It's thoroughly counterproductive.

The wisest thing they can do is fix all the bugs, exploits and make sure season 2 is clean. As for season 1, write it off as "PTR Phase 2

Except that's completely unrealistic. A bug-free final product with a codebase of several million lines is just not possible. There will be bugs. Many of them will be obscure and go unnoticed during PTRs. This is how large pieces of code work.

What you're saying is that they should attempt to achieve something that is only doable in theory, not in practice.

They need pragmatic solutions, not theoretical solutions. Pragmatically, bugs will exist. Pragmatically, people will use those bugs to their advantage. It's just life. Trying to play it off as "code harder, get all the bugs" is so blissfully naive it's almost cute.

I have sympathy that their epeen is hurting. But wanting bans over it is basically throwing a tantrum.

Throwing a tantrum? Really?

That's like saying that someone who advocates that Ray Rice does jail time is throwing a tantrum because Ray Rice didn't punch HIM/HER in the face. It just doesn't work that way. We have rules in life and in games for a reason. Wanting the rulemakers to follow through with the rules they've put in place isn't throwing a tantrum.

please, the people who say its discourageting to "only" have 33.3 % dropchance from his 12 bosses killed, please submit a higher pool to do math from... doing 4 runs and then complaining you only had 33 % droprate, is just not enuff data to make that assesment from

I'm not saying that's the actual droprate on keys.

I'm just illustrating that key farming is the annoying part of the Ubers process, not organ farming, and that Blizzard chose the wrong aspect to make guaranteed. My experience with T6 Keywarden farming may not be "normal" but certainly it's not far from it, and that's a problem, because it's still far too big of a hurdle to get people to actually want to do the content.... and that's all that matters.

Farming keys is the first step in the process. How many attempts do you think people are going to give, especially solo, before they realize they've spent 20+ minutes running around some of the largest zones in the game like a chicken with its head cut off, and they don't even have ONE machine, let alone FOUR machines, and that even when they do get four machines, whenever that may be, they're still completely at the mercy of the RNG gods for a proper set of primaries AND a good passive despite being on the hardest difficulty and having the best chances to get the keys? I mean even after this drop rate buff to the organs you're talking about hours of investment per craft. Most of that is spent running around Fields of Misery and Dahlgur Oasis. Woooohoooo for progress, I suppose.

There is a very good reason why they should have buffed the key droprate, not the organ droprate.... farming Keywardens is a horrible, boring, waste of time.

I think its great that we have theese discussions, however its becoming a little to much with all this "boost droprates issues" - its gonna end up with everything just being easymode to get, and where is the fun in that ? diablo is a game about grinding, if you dont like that, diablo is not the game for you, it has allways been like that.

I'd like to point out that you admit you got a great hellfire amulet in about five hours of farming, and only six crafting attempts. Given that luck I don't think you have any right to sit back on your high horse and lecture people about "grinding" as you didn't really make that much of an investment into getting an amulet. You got lucky. Period. Other people have crafted dozens of amulets without getting a trifecta amulet with a good passive. Maybe you'd like to switch places with them, since apparently you don't mind grinding Keywardens for weeks and weeks.

It's almost like listening to rich people lecture poor people about just going out and getting a job. At some point you realize they're so disconnected from reality that their opinion doesn't really hold water.

I don't see what the issue is if wizards and WDs have builds that use signatures only. Don't we want items that change HOW we play?

The issue with Depth Diggers is that it highlights a fundamental weakness in resource generators and not a fundamental "OPness" with WD/Wiz signature spells.

God forbid someone gets Depth Diggers and Rhen'ho Flayer. They might actually have access to different builds based on Plague of Toads. Whoop dee fucking doo? I don't see what's so inherently bad about that. It breaks general paradigms. It works well with Carnevil. It works well with Mirrorball. It works well with Combination Strike. Aren't those kind of synergies what most players actually want from the game?

Wow, people are really coming out of the woodwork. Where were all you bastards when I was being outnumbered 20 to 1 on the whole AH issue?

I jest

The crowd that comments on the news is very different from the ones that post on the forums. In general, if you read news comments, it's basically the b.net crowd.

I, personally, don't give a shit if they remove the AH. I haven't used it for quite a while and I didn't plan on using it in the future. But I think without some way to facilitate trading that amounts to more than sitting in trade chat and competing with the chat bots.... that this is a myopic solution.

My biggest concern is that D2 was better-equipped to handle trading (better chat interface, named games, no need for battletags to join a game) than D3 currently is. That means, without some kind of improvement... trading in D3 is going to be worse than D2 and, likely, going to amount to forum use.

One thing I have always taken issue with is any "trading" solution that requires alt-tabbing. It's lazy, sloppy, and something that was appropos in 1998 but is completely unacceptable in 2013.

It has no bearing on how I play, but I can clearly see this as a major stumbling point. If someone chooses to trade an item it shouldn't take a feat of herculean strength to arrange a trade.

It's one of the things Blizzard should really have done early on. They probably didn't take the "fix" route because of the outcry from having things like DH's Smokescreen and Monk's Serenity nerfed like that.

500 kids cry in a forum that Blizzard always "nerfs everything" (and that's usually because everything else is in line and working as intended, as Archon himself pointed out) and suddenly we're stuck with "broken" builds for almost a year

Something dawned on me the other day. When you sub to WoW you get forum access. D3 has no sub so you basically have forum access forever, factoring out banned people obviously.

That means that purchasing D3 (or acquiring a key somehow) basically gives you the ability to troll the fuck out of the official forums without actually having played. It's kinda the polar opposite of the people who claimed they quit and then were "outted" by the armory.

Now I'm not saying that people who quit have worthless opinions, but it does seem more likely that people who are actively playing the game will not go the full-on troll route. So I can only wonder how many of the people on the official forums are 1) just raging because it's the "cool" thing to do, or 2) haven't actually touched the game in months.

It's rather a shame that Blizzard never took action on WotB and Archon from the get go and instead was held hostage by the same morons who claimed that the IAS nerf would make IAS useless. A lot of people get on Blizzard for playing "daddy knows best" with us, but I really think that sometime they need to just tell people to STFU and deal with it because not making those particular changes due to a handful of people who whine over OP things being nerfed... well that's detrimental to the game for the rest of us.

The concepts are slightly different. The goblin will pick up all trash items, which is great. He doesn't throw them in the inventory, just makes them disappear from the ground. But sometimes he also actually throws a few good items back. Different mechanics altogether.

I think the goblin is an example as to exactly why the itemization patch isn't going to happen as fast as some of us would like it to. It's a really unique (lol) effect. This is the kind of thing that legendaries and sets need but they are not easy to come up with by any stretch of the imagination. I realize that I am not a game developer, but there is no way that I could come up with enough ideas that are of the caliber of that goblin item (or the double Hydra item) to effectively re-tool all Legendary and Set items. It's a daunting task, but the goblin item is showing creativity that SHOULD put to rest this talk about D3s itemization because that shit is nuts!

You may not have a total "BiS" item with this goblin thing, but what you will have is more chance for loot. Is the tradeoff worth it? Maybe, maybe not. The only thing I hope is that it doesn't become a "follower item" because then it would be a no-brainer to equip your follower with an item that sucks up garbage items and sometimes spits out a rare.

On August 1, 2005, Blizzard Entertainment announced the closure of Blizzard North. A key reason for the closure was Blizzard North's poor development of what was to be Diablo III which did not meet the expectations of Vivendi.

Ridiculous. The dude "just" wants to be able to WW from one end of the zone to the other, and is upset that now he can't. And the crazy thing is that Blizzard is taking its feedback from people that get outraged that "sometimes there is an empty screen between mob clumps". OH NOES!!!

Yeah that's basically the exact same thought I had. Sadly this thread exhibits the same issue with two people whining about a nerf to Watch Tower as if Blizzard didn't just spend months buffing 90% of the game.

Evil Blizzard. Shame on them for putting in some very minor nerfs with the massive amounts of buffs that this patch has. They're obviously trying to ruin our fun with 1.0.8. I swear some people in this community would probably leave their hands and feet in the bed when they woke up if they didn't have wrists and ankles. The stupidity is sometimes overwhelming.

It's pretty sad that Blizzard has to continue to waste time by repeating that the web team isn't the team that develops the game and that the console team is different and this and that. It's boring, it's old, it's something that anyone with a brain knows. Yet, instead of meaningful dialogue they have to waste their time addressing the total morons out there.

and density cant be datamined. Information like that you must wait for the official patch notes

PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFTTTT

You just suck at datamining obviously. If you leave your name and address I will FedEx you a shiny new pith helmet and a nice new mining pick. That will tremendously increase your ability to mine properly!

I wasn't aware that 4% HP/sec, 20% armor, and 20% resist all was even in the same realm of awesomeness as Overawe is. Hell, even WDs have a ridiculously-strong DPS buff. To say that Inspiring Presence + Warcry + Impunity is the "best" buff is severely... stupid.

It's good that Barbs get a solid defensive group buff. It's certainly better than Mantra of Healing, but it's hardly the absolute best buff in the game. Frankly, I think they should encourage people to bring synergies to groups anyway. Sacrifice a little personal DPS for a very large group survivability buff, or a very big DPS buff.

I know I typically don't run BBV on my WD, but every time I'm in a group I switch it in for something.

Isn't that the whole point of the sentence that I've quoted earlier? Choice, and lots of it.

I think his point was that the current gems need to be redesigned (away from primary stats, and the like) before we simply go about adding more.

If you're a Wiz/WD there is no point to ever socketing a ruby/emerald in your non-helm armor.
If you're a DH/Monk there is no point to ever socketing a ruby/topaz in your non-helm armor.
If you're a Barb there is no point to ever socketing a topaz/emerald in your non-helm armor.
Regardless of class there is almost zero point to socketing a topaz/amethyst in your weapon.
Regardless of class there is almost zero point to socketing a topaz/amethyst/ruby in your helm once you're max pLvl, and when you're under pLvl 100 the only real choice is a ruby.

Can't we fix those major issues with the current gems before we start lobbying for throwing more spaghetti at the wall? The current gems leave a LOT of room to be desired. That needs to be fixed before we start expanding on a system that just isn't living up to expectations.

You're asking for quantity over quality. Bagstone is asking for quality over quantity. I can't really support quantity over quality in this particular situation. We don't need 40000000 gem options. We need a handful of INTERESTING options.

It really is telling, though. It's more popular to not be able to think clearly and just spout hatred than it is to be factually-accurate. People don't like facts. They like controversy. Why be reasonable and educated when you can be sensationalist?